Otway At The RAH

On Friday, 30 October, 1998, John Otway played to an adoring crowd at the Royal Albert Hall. It was his finest moment to date, and saw him reunited with his first band - the Aylesbury Youth Orchestra (some members of which have even written of their experience - see below - and there's also an interview with several of them here).

John has kindly sent me 13 pictures which were taken during the RAH gig. They are exceptionally good, and I suspect they were taken by a professional (the photographer's name is Brian Thomas - credit where it's due, and all that). They are all JPEG format images, with each one weighing in at about 45kB in size. For those of you with fast connections, or who want to see all the photos in all their glory, I've set up a page with all of the large versions on. For those of you who would like to view selected images, there's a page with some thumbnails on, each of which can be clicked on to view the larger version of the picture.

For several weeks before the big day of the concert we were lucky enough to welcome John Otway and co. to our Saturday morning rehearsals. Finally the day of the concert arrived, and we prepared to play in the biggest concert of our lives.

After arriving at the Royal Albert Hall, we were led to our dressing rooms, where we found large supplies of Mars bars, crisps and cola, courtesy of John. We received our high quality commemorative T-shirts, complete with the John Otway logo. These were later signed by members of the band, making them collectors items (any bids?). We went on stage to do the sound check, where we realised the Royal Albert Hall was smaller than we first thought (we later got seats right at the top, and quickly changed our minds on the size - the stage seemed miles away!). We were privileged to stand on the same stage as Paul Bradley (aka Nigel from EastEnders). The Otway Catering Company provided us with a gourmet meal, consisting of either pasta or chicken stuff.

Then came the moment we had all been waiting our whole lives for - we walked onto the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, to an almost full house and the wonderful sounds of Radiohead. We sat behind John throughout the first half, and discovered exactly where he gets his reputation from. It was an incredible experience when we actually started playing, and the reaction of the audience was amazing (thank you!). The band didn't know how the fans would react, and everyone was relieved that we had pulled it off.

But the highlight of the evening had to be sitting right at the top of the Albert Hall during the interval, doing Mexican waves and throwing paper aeroplanes!

P.S. If anyone needs an orchestra...contact us via John!
P.P.S. We love John Otway but Richard rocks and Murray is the best

In addition to writing these words, the members of AYO have also been kind enough to send me the images that are dotted around here. The first is a scan of one of the backstage passes they were supplied with, whilst the rest are scans of the signatures of Otway, Richard and Murray, as taken from the T-shirts that are mentioned above. Click on the images if you want a better view - Xav

London is a fair old schlepp from Harrogate, but at least it's conveniently situated at the end of the M1.

We found the Royal Albert Hall, dumped the car and legged it to the nearest pub. I reckon most of the people in there were on the way to the gig - you can spot Otway fans a mile off (whether they wear the T-shirts or not). For a start most of them are around my age (spitting distance of 42) and for another thing they mostly look vaguely intelligent and wysiwyg. Oh, and for another they've usually got a glass in their hands.

We stayed in the pub just long enough to eat, throw down a bit of cider and phone home, then headed off to the Royal Albert Hall. It is a really impressive place. Nicely laid out in a round, red sort of way, and compact enough to get a good view wherever you sit. They achieve the compactness at ground level by having lots of higher levels, and Roy and I went all the way up to the top balcony to see what it looked like from there. It was actually closed to the public but we asked some nearby staff very nicely if we could just have a nosy for a couple of minutes, and they must have decided we looked harmless enough. Anyway, it's extremely high up and I had a brief fantasy about hang gliding down, but had failed to bring the necessary equipment so just used the stairs.

When we took our seats I was pleased to note that we had a brilliant view of the stage. The place was impressively full; people had travelled from all over the UK to be part of The Big One For Otway and we were all rooting for him.

We were sitting next to two lovely ladies who turned out to be John's auntie and his mum, and they sketched out his life story before the show and embellished it in the interval. Actually we already knew a fair bit of it, having read the book, but we enjoyed talking to them very much and I can now see how he got to be such a genuinely nice bloke.

In order to avoid the risk of being blown off the stage by a support act, John had opted to do the whole lot himself, and he and Richard "axe" Holgarth were joined on stage by various special guests in turn - including Attila the Stockbroker, Wild Willy Barrett and Wilko Johnson.

The Aylesbury Youth Orchestra sat patiently waiting until it was their turn to join in with "Birthday Boy", "The Highwayman" and, of course, "Geneva". Surprisingly - to me anyway - the orchestral treatment worked well on all three songs. It sounded so good I checked the programme to see who had put it together, and noted that the orchestral music was composed by Jean-Paul Metzger and the conductor was Hugh Molloy. Brilliant job done by both of them and by the whole orchestra. The Big Band played on these three songs too, and Adam, Murray and Seymour turned up in full evening dress which I thought was very fitting for this special occasion, a nice touch.

After Geneva, which ended this first set, John presented some flowers to the orchestra and, whilst he was enjoying the glow from pulling the spectacular bit off so well, his 9 year old daughter Amy came on stage and presented some flowers to him as well. I bet she's really proud of him.

The second half was a more traditional Otway and the Big Band set, with an extra special guest appearance by Brian the Roadie playing the wooden stumps on "Liberty Valence". They also played the country version of "Beware of the Flowers" and probably all of John's best songs except "Too Much Air Not Enough Oxygen". One nice surprise was that they played "Whoops Apocalypse" which I've never seen done live before. So there's probably still hope for "Too Much Air".

Brian reappeared at the end to do his startling breeze block breaking headbut. Yes, he really does break a breeze block with his head and it must hurt but he keeps on coming back and doing it again. I saw him sitting on the steps outside later on (about 1 am) and his head was still bleeding but he seemed completely unconcerned.

I've never taken drugs, but I gather the feeling of euphoria and well being you get from opiates is similar to that achieved by vigorous exercise or a particularly good gig. I don't often go and see the same person or band twice, because the adrenaline hit is never quite as good the second time. I've been to about 30 John Otway gigs over the past three years though, partly in the interests of scientific enquiry and partly because I'm just an Otway junkie, and have left each one as high as a kite. The Royal Albert Hall gig had been an exceptionally nourishing one and I reckon everyone left with their endorphin and enkephalin levels nicely topped up.